Scores join search for missing Plainview man

By HOMER MARQUEZ Herald News Editor

Published 9:36 am, Saturday, May 3, 2014

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Homer Marquez/Plainview HeraldHundreds of area volunteers gathered at Broadway Park on Saturday to search for Andrew Pena, who has been missing for more than a month. The current search targets the area along FM 400, which covers 84 miles in Swisher, Hale and Lubbock counties. less

Homer Marquez/Plainview HeraldHundreds of area volunteers gathered at Broadway Park on Saturday to search for Andrew Pena, who has been missing for more than a month. The current search targets the area along ... more

Scores join search for missing Plainview man

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More than a hundred volunteers lent helping hands to Plainview’s Pena family, which organized a community search for Andrew Pena who has been missing for more than a month.

Search crews, which included members of the Plainview Police Department, utilized every tool at their disposal as some volunteers brought horses, binoculars and a fleet of gators and ATVs.

Many dressed in green in honor of Pena, participants spent their Saturday morning searching numerous dirt roads and combing acres of CRP grass on either side of FM 400 for Pena.

Anonymous tips suggest to the family that Pena was beaten close to death and his body dumped somewhere along the miles of country dirt roads and CRP in the vicinity of FM 400.

“We hate to go on just tips like this, but we’ve got to follow up on them,” said Andrew’s father, Angel ,during their first community search on Tuesday.

On Friday, the family and Plainview Crime Stoppers announced that the reward for any information leading locating Pena had been raised to $1,400.

Pena was last seen April 6 following his grandmother’s funeral. Pena was scheduled to travel to Cactus on a bus later that night to start a new job, but he never arrived at his destination.

Since then, family and friends have not had any contact with Pena, despite numerous news stories and Internet coverage since his disappearance was reported more than two weeks ago.

“I know my son; it’s not like him to just not call,” said Angel Pena, who added that his son would have at least tried to contact his two children.

“There’s been a lot of coverage since he’s been missing, and by now he would have at least called me and said ‘Dad what’s the heck are you doing . . . I’m OK.’ ”

Pena is a Hispanic male standing about 5-feet-8. He has a rosary tattoo on his chest and neck, a tribal tattoo around his left arm, a green clover on his right arm and a star tattoo on the lower right side of his stomach.

Anyone with information on Pena’s whereabouts should call the Plainview Police Department at 806-296-1111 or Lubbock police at 806-775-2865.